known. Probably through one of his fellow-students, Douglas, Ker, Keith,
Lindsay or another, the report reached Scotland that the young Earl had
left in Padua 'a strange relique,' an emblematic figure emblazoned; and
had made, on the subject, a singular remark. The emblematic figure
represented 'a blackamoor reaching at a crown with a sword, in a
stretched posture:' the remark of Gowrie, 'the Earl's own _mot_,' was to
the effect that the emblem displayed, _in umbra_, or foreshadowed, what
was to be done _in facto_. This emblem was secured at Padua, in 1609, by
Sir Robert Douglas, who had heard of it in Scotland, and it was sent to
King James. {127b} If such ideas were in Gowrie's mind, he showed no
signs of them in an early correspondence with the King. In 1595, James
wrote 'a most loving letter' to Gowrie; the Earl replied in a tone of
gratitude. At the same time Gowrie wrote to a preacher in Perth,
extolling the conduct of an English fanatic, who had thrown down and
trampled on the Host, at Rome. He hoped, he said, when he returned to
Scotland, 'to amend whatever is amiss for lack of my presence.' {128a}
Nevertheless, on December 25, 1598, Nicholson informed Cecil that Gowrie
had been converted to Catholicism. {128b} In the Venice despatches and
Vatican transcripts I find no corroboration. Gowrie appears to have
visited Rome; the Ruthven apologist declares that he was there 'in danger
for his religion.' Galloway, on August 11, 1600, in presence of the King
and the people of Edinburgh, vowed that Gowrie, since his return from
Italy, had laboured to make James 'revolt from Religion, at least in
inward sincerity, to entertain purpose with the Pope, and he himself
promised to furnish intelligence.'
If so, Gowrie was, indeed, 'a deep dissimulate hypocrite.'
Galloway's informant must have been the King. If Gowrie did or said
anything to colour the story, it may have been for the purpose of
discovering, by pretending to approve of them, these intrigues with Rome,
of which James was constantly being accused.
A new complexity is added here, by a list of Scottish Catholic nobles,
ready to join an invading Spanish force, which the Earl of Bothwell
handed in to Philip III. of Spain, at a date not absolutely certain. At
a time conjectured at by Major Hume, as 1600, Bothwell laid before the
Spanish ministry a scheme for an invasion of Scotland. He made another
more elaborate proposal at a date which, to all seeming, was July 1601.
In the appended list of Scottish Catholic nobles appear the names of the
Earl of Gowrie, and of 'Baron Rastellerse,' that is, Logan of Restalrig.
But, in 1601, there was no Earl of Gowrie; the title was extinct, the
lands were forfeited, and Gowrie's natural heir, William Ruthven, his
brother, was a poor student at Cambridge. Could Bothwell refer to him,
who was no Catholic? Can he have handed in (in 1601) an earlier list of
1600, without deleting the name of the dead Gowrie? As to Gowrie's real
creed, Bothwell must have known the truth, through Home, a reluctant
convert to Presbyterianism, who went from Paris to Brussels to meet
Bothwell, leaving Gowrie in Paris, just before Home and Gowrie openly,
and, as it was said, Bothwell secretly, returned to Scotland in April
1600. Was the Gowrie conspiracy a Bothwellian plot? {129a}
We know little more about Gowrie, after his letters of 1595, till, on
August 18, 1599, Colville reports to Cecil that the party of the Kirk
(who were now without a leader among the greater nobles) intend to summon
home the Earl. {129b} He is said to have stayed for three months at
Geneva with Beza, the famous reformer, who was devoted to him. He was in
Paris, in February and March 1600. The English ambassador, Neville,
recommended Gowrie to Cecil, as 'a man of whom there may be exceeding
good use made.' Elizabeth and Cecil were then on the worst terms with
James. At Paris, Gowrie would meet Lord Home, who, as we have said and
shall prove in a later connection, had an interview with the exiled
Bothwell, still wandering, plotting and threatening descents on Scotland
(p. 206).
On April 3, Gowrie was in London. {130a} He was very well received; 'a
cabinet of plate,' it is said, was given to him by Elizabeth; what else
passed we do not know. In May Gowrie returned to Scotland, and rode into
Edinburgh among a cavalcade of his friends. According to Sir John Carey,
writing to Cecil, from Berwick, on May 29, James displayed jealousy of
Gowrie, 'giving him many jests and pretty taunts,' on his reception by
Elizabeth, and 'marvelling that the ministers met him not.' {130b}
Calderwood adds a rumour that James, talking of Gowrie's entry to
Edinburgh, said, 'there were more with his father when he went to the
scaffold.' Again, as the Earl leaned on the King's chair at breakfast,
James talked of dogs and hawks, and made an allusion to the death of
Riccio, in which Gowrie's father and grandfather took part.
These are rumours; it is certain that the King (June 20) gave Gowrie a
year's respite from pursuit of his creditors, to whom he was in debt for
moneys owed to him by the Crown, expenditure by the late Earl of Gowrie
when in power (1583). {131a} It is also certain that Gowrie opposed the
King's demands for money, in a convention of June 21. {131b} But so did
Lord President Fyvie, who never ceased to be James's trusted minister,
and later, Chancellor, under the title of Earl of Dunfermline.
Calderwood reports that, after Gowrie's speech, Sir David Murray said,
'Yonder is an unhappy man; they are but seeking occasion of his death,
which now he has given.' This is absurd: Fyvie and the Laird of Easter
Wemyss opposed the King as stoutly, and no harm followed to them; Fyvie
rising steadily (and he had opposed the King yet more sturdily before) to
the highest official position.
Calderwood adds a silly tale of Dr. Herries. Beatrix Ruthven laughed at
his lame leg; he looked in her palm, and predicted a great disaster. The
same anecdote, with, of course, another subject, is told of Gowrie's own
prediction that a certain man would come to be hanged, which was
fulfilled. Gowrie had been at Perth, before the convention at Holyrood
of June 21. To Perth he returned; thence, some time in July (about the
20th), {131c} he went to his castle of Strabran, in Atholl, to hunt.
Whether his brother the Master remained with him continuously till the
Earl's return to Perth on Saturday, August 2, I know not how to
ascertain. If there is anything genuine in the plot-letters produced
eight years later, the Master once or twice visited Edinburgh in July,
but that may have been before going to Strabran.
Concerning the Master, a romantic story of unknown source, but certainly
never alluded to in the surviving gossip of the day, was published, late
in the eighteenth century, by Lord Hailes. 'A report is handed down that
Lord _Gowrie's_ brother received from the Queen a ribbon which she had
got from the King, that _Mr. Alexander_ went into the King's garden at
Falkland on a sultry hot day, and lay down in a shade, and fell asleep.
His breast being open, the King passed that way and discovered part of
the ribbon about his neck below his cravat, upon which he made quick
haste into the palace, which was observed by one of the Queen's ladies
who passed the same way. She instantly took the ribbon from his neck,
went a near way to the Queen's closet, where she found her Majesty at her
toilet, whom she requested to lay the ribbon in a drawer.' James
entered, and asked to be shown the ribbon. The Queen produced it, and
James retired, muttering, 'Devil tak' me, but like is an ill mark.'
Legend does not say when, or in what year this occurred. But the fancy
of authors has identified the Queen's lady with Beatrix Ruthven, and has
added that the Master, in disgrace (though undetected), retired with
Gowrie to Strabane, or Strabran. History has no concern with such
fables. It is certain, however, or at least contemporary letters aver,
that Queen Anne of Denmark was grieved and angered by the slaying of the
Gowries. On October 21, 1600, Carey, writing to Cecil from Woodrington,
mentions this, and the tattle to the effect that, as the Queen is about
to have a child (Charles I.), 'she shall be kept as prisoner ever after.'
Was the Master supposed to be father of the Queen's child? Carey goes
on, 'There is a letter found with a bracelet in it, sent from the Queen
to the Earl of Gowrie, to persuade him to leave his country life and come
to Court, assuring him that he should enjoy any contents that Court could
afford.' {133} Can some amorous promise underlie this, as in the case of
Mr. Pickwick's letter to Mrs. Bardell, about the warming-pan? 'This
letter the King hath,' says Carey. Was it with Gowrie, not the Master,
that the Queen was in love? She was very fond of Beatrix Ruthven, and
would disbelieve in the guilt of her brothers; hence these tears and that
anger of the Queen.
But James also, says Calderwood, was as anxious as Carey declares that
the Queen was, to bring Gowrie to Falkland. 'When the Earl was in
Strabran, fifteen days before the fact, the King wrote sundry letters to
the Earl, desiring him to come and hunt with him in the wood of Falkland;
which letters were found in my Lord's pocket, at his death, as is
reported, but were destroyed.' {134a}
So James was not jealous; both he and the Queen were inviting Gowrie to
their country house, the Queen adding the gift of a bracelet. She may
have worked it herself, like the bracelet which Queen Mary is said to
have sent to Bothwell.
All this is the idlest gossip. But it is certain that, on one occasion,
at the end of July, 'close letters' were sent from the Court at Edinburgh
to Atholl and Gowrie; and, later, to Inchaffray and the Master, the first
three are in Bothwell's list of Catholics ready to meet the Spanish
invaders. The fact of the letters appears from the Treasurer's accounts,
where the money paid to the boy who carried the letters is recorded,
without dates of the days of the month. The boy got 33 shillings, Scots,
for the journey from Edinburgh to the Earls of Gowrie and Atholl; 24 for
the other two, which he carried from Falkland. Craigengelt, in his
deposition, 'denies that during my Lord's being in Strabran, neither yet
in Perth, after his coming from Strabran, he knew any man or page to come
from Court to my Lord, or that he commanded to give them any meat or
drink.' {134b}
No conclusion as to James's guilt can be drawn, either from the fact that
he wrote to Atholl, Inchaffray, the Master, and Gowrie at the end of
July, or from the circumstance that Craigengelt professed to know nothing
about any messenger. James might write to ask the Earl to hunt, we
cannot guess what he had to say, at the same time, to Atholl or
Inchaffray or the Master. He may even have written about the affair of
the Abbey of Scone, if it is true that the Master wished to get it from
his brother. We really cannot infer that, as the Ruthvens would not come
and be killed, when invited, at Falkland, James went to kill them at
Perth. Even if he summoned the Master for August 5, intending to make it
appear that the Master had asked him to come to Perth, the Master need
not have arrived before seven in the morning, when the King went and
hunted for four hours. What conceivable reason had the Master, if
innocent, for leaving Perth at 4 A.M. and visiting his sovereign at seven
in the morning?
As to the coming of the Gowries to Perth from Strabran or Strabane before
the tragedy, we only know what Craigengelt stated. His language is not
lucid.
'Depones that, my Lords being in Strabrand, Alexander Ruthven' (a
kinsman) 'came from Dunkeld to my Lord. And that upon Friday (August 1)
my Lord commanded Captain Ruthven to ride, and tell my Lady' (Gowrie's
mother), 'that he was to come, and Captain Ruthven met my Lord at the
ferry-boat, and rode back to Dunkeld with my Lord, where he' (Gowrie)
'having supped, returned to his bed at Trochene, the deponer being in his
company.'
Where, at the end of July, was Lady Gowrie? Was she within a day's ride
of her sons? Was she at Perth? We know that she was at Dirleton Castle,
near North Berwick, on August 6. Had she left the neighbourhood of Perth
between the 1st and 5th of August? Captain Ruthven seems to have ridden
to Lady Gowrie, and back again to Dunkeld with Gowrie. If so (and I can
make no other sense of it), she was in Perthshire on August 1, and went
at once to Dirleton. Did she keep out of the way of the performances of
August 5?
It is curious that no apologist for Gowrie, as far as I have observed,
makes any remark on this perplexing affair of 'my Lady.' We know that
she had once already set a successful trap for the King. He had not
punished her; he took two of her daughters, Barbara and Beatrix, into his
household; and restored to Gowrie his inheritance of the lands of Scone,
which, as we know, had been held by his father. He had written a loving
letter to Gowrie at Padua, after the young man had for many months been
conspiring against him with his most dangerous enemy, the wild Earl of
Bothwell.
On the morning of the fatal August 5, Gowrie went to sermon. What else
he did, we learn from John Moncrieff, who was the Earl's cautioner, or
guarantee, for a large sum due by him to one Robert Jolly. {137} He was
also brother of Hew Moncrieff, who fled after having been with Gowrie in
arms, against Herries, Ramsay, and Erskine. Both Moncrieffs, says John,
were puzzled when they found that the Master had ridden from Perth so
early in the morning. Gowrie, says Moncrieff, did not attend the Town
Council meeting after church; he excused himself on account of private
affairs. He also sent away George Hay who was with him on business when
Henderson arrived from Falkland, saying that he had other engagements.
For the same reason, he, at first, declined to do a piece of business
with Moncrieff, who dined with him and two other gentlemen. 'He made him
to misknow all things,' that is affected to take no notice, when Andrew
Ruthven came in, and 'rounded to him' (whispered to him) about the King's
approach. Then the Master entered, and Gowrie went out to meet the King.
The rest we know, as far as evidence exists.
[Picture: Queen Anne of Denmark]
We now have all the essential facts which rest on fairly good evidence,
and we ask, did the Ruthvens lay a plot for the King, or did the King
weave a web to catch the Ruthvens? Looking first at character and
probable motives, we dismiss the gossip about the amorous Queen and the
jealous King. The tatlers did not know whether to select Gowrie or the
Master as the object of the Queen's passion, or whether to allege that
she had a polyandrous affection for both at once. The letters of the age
hint at no such amour till after the tragedy, when tales of the _liaison_
of Anne of Denmark with the elder or younger Ruthven, or both, arose as a
myth to account for the events. The Queen, no doubt, was deeply grieved
in a womanly way for the sake of her two maidens, Beatrix and Barbara
Ruthven. Her Majesty, also in a womanly way, had a running feud with Mar
and the whole house of Erskine. To Mar, certainly one of the few men of
honour as well as of rank in Scotland, James had entrusted his son,
Prince Henry; the care of the heir to the Crown was a kind of hereditary
charge of the Erskines. The Queen had already, in her resentment at not
having the custody of her son, engaged in one dangerous plot against Mar;
she made another quarrel on this point at the time (1603) when the King
succeeded to the crown of England. Now Mar was present at the Gowrie
tragedy, and his cousin, Sir Thomas Erskine, took part in the deeds.
Hating the Erskines, devoted to the Ruthven ladies, and always feebly in
opposition to her husband, the Queen, no doubt, paraded her grief, her
scepticism, and her resentment. This was quite in keeping with her
character, and this conduct lent colour to the myth that she loved
Gowrie, or the Master, or both, _par amours_. The subject is good for a
ballad or a novel, but history has nothing to make with the legend on
which Mr. G. P. R. James based a romance, and Mr. Pinkerton a theory.
Leaving fable for fact, what motives had James for killing both the
Ruthvens? He had dropped the hereditary feud, and had taken no measures
against the young Earl to punish his conspiracies with Bothwell in
1593-1594. Of Gowrie, on his return to Scotland in May, he may have
entertained some jealousy. The Earl had been for months in Paris,
caressed by the English ambassador, and probably, as we have seen, in
touch with the exiled and ceaselessly conspiring Bothwell. In London the
Earl had been well received by Elizabeth, and by Lord Willoughby, who, a
year earlier, as Governor of Berwick, had insulted James by kidnapping,
close to Edinburgh, an English gentleman, Ashfield, on a visit to the
King's Court. Guevara, a cousin of Lord Willoughby, lured Ashfield into
the coach of the English envoy Bowes, and drove him to the frontier.
Lord Willoughby had a swift yacht lying off Leith, in case it was thought
better to abduct Ashfield by sea. This is an example of English
insolence to the Scottish King--also of English kidnapping--and Lord
Willoughby, the manager, had made friends with Gowrie in England.
Thus James, who was then on the worst terms, short of open war, with
England, may have suspected and disliked the Earl, who had once already
put himself at the service of Elizabeth, and might do so again. In the
April of 1600, rumours of a conspiracy by Archibald Douglas, the infamous
traitor; Douglas of Spot, one of Morton's brood, and John Colville--who,
with Bothwell and, later, independently, had caught James, had tried to
catch him, and proposed to Essex to catch him again,--were afloat.
Colville was in Paris at the same time as Gowrie; Bothwell was reported
to have come secretly to Scotland in April or May, and this combination
of facts or rumours may have aroused the King's mistrust. Again, the
Kirk was restive; the preachers, in need of a leader, were said by
Colville to have summoned Gowrie home. {140a} Moreover there were
persons about James--for example, Colonel Stewart--who had reason to
dread the Earl's vengeance for his father. The Ruthven Apologist
mentions this fact, and the predilection of the Kirk for Gowrie, among
the motives for destroying him.
Once more there are hints, very vague, that, in 1593, Bothwell aimed at
changing the dynasty. {140b} The fable that Gowrie was a maternal
grandson of Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV, by Henry Stewart, Lord
Methven, her third husband, and that Gowrie was thus a candidate for the
succession to the English throne, perhaps also for the hand of Arabella
Stuart, may conceivably have existed. (Compare Appendix A.) Again,
Gowrie had sided with the burgesses and minor barons, as against the
nobles, by refusing a grant of money to James, in the convention of June
1600, and James owed money to Gowrie, as he did to most people. But we
have already seen that an exemption had been granted to Gowrie for a year
from pursuit of creditors, as far, that is, as regarded his _father's_
debts (80,000_l._ Scots), (June 20, 1600). The College of Justice
refused to grant any new legal summonses of creditors against Gowrie, and
suspended all that were extant.
Mr. Barbe accuses the King of 'utter and unblushing disregard for common
truth and common honesty.' Be this as it may, the exemption granted to
Gowrie was not regarded by his father's creditors as extending to his
mother, after his dishonoured death. On November 1, 1600, Lady Gowrie
implored Elphinstone, the Secretary, to bring her suit for relief before
the King. The security for these debts was on her 'conjunct fee lands,'
and creditors, because, I suppose, the Gowrie estates were about to be
forfeited, pressed Lady Gowrie, who, of course, had no exemption. We
know nothing as to the success of Lady Gowrie's petition, but we have
seen that her daughters married very well. I presume that Gowrie, not
his mother, had previously paid interest on the debts, 'he had already
paid many sums of money.' James had already restored to Gowrie the
valuable lands of Scone. {142}
However, taking things as the King's adversaries regard them, the
cumulative effect of these several grudges (and of the mystery of
Gowrie's Catholicism) would urge James to lay his very subtle plot. He
would secretly call young Ruthven to Falkland by six in the morning of
August 5, he would make it appear that Ruthven had invited _him_ to
Perth, he would lure the youth to a turret, managing to be locked in with
him and an armed man; he would post Ramsay below the turret window, and
warn him to run up the dark staircase at the King's cry of treason. By
the locked door he would exclude Lennox and Mar, while his minions would
first delay Gowrie's approach, by the narrow stairs, and then permit him
to enter with only one companion, Cranstoun. He would cause a report of
his own departure to be circulated, exactly at the right moment to bring
Gowrie under the turret window, and within reach of his cries. This plot
requires the minutest punctuality, everything must occur at the right
moment, and all would have been defeated had Gowrie told the truth about
the King's departure, or even asked 'Where is the King's horse?' Or
Gowrie might have stood in the streets of Perth, and summoned his
burgesses in arms. The King and the courtiers, with their dead man,
would have been beleaguered, without provisions, in Gowrie's house. Was
James the man, on the strength of the grudges which we have carefully
enumerated, to risk himself, unarmed, in this situation? As to how he
managed to have the door locked, so as to exclude the majority of his
suite, who can conjecture? How, again, did he induce Gowrie to aver, and
that after making inquiry, that he _had_ ridden homewards?
I cannot believe that any sane man or monarch, from the motives
specified, would or could have laid, and that successfully, the plot
attributed to the King.
Turning to Gowrie, we find that his grudges against James may have been
deep and many. If revengeful, he had the treacherous method of his
father's conviction, and the insults to his mother, to punish. For a boy
of seventeen he had already attempted a good deal, in 1593-1594. His
mother had set him an example of King-catching, and it looks as if his
mother had been near him in Perth, while he was at Strabane. If
ambitious, and devoted to Elizabeth and England (as he had been), Gowrie
had motives for a new Raid of Ruthven, the unceasing desire of the
English Government. He might, if successful, head a new administration
resting on the support of England and the Kirk. Such a change was due in
the natural course of things. Or, quite the reverse, if a secret
Catholic he might hand the King over to Bothwell.
Thus Gowrie may well have wished to revenge his father; his mother had
once already helped to betray James to an attack of the most insulting
nature; he himself was strong for the Kirk, over which James was playing
the despot; _or_, he desired toleration for Catholics; he had been well
received in England, where all such plots--their name was legion--had
always been fostered; he was very young, and he risked everything. Only
his method was new--that of strict secrecy. He had previously spoken to
Mr. Cowper, minister of Perth, in a general way, about the failure of
plots for lack of deep secrecy, and through the admission of too many
confederates. Cowper told this to Spottiswoode, at Falkland. Mr. Rhynd,
Gowrie's tutor, told Cowper and the Comptroller, 'unrequired' (not under
torture, nor in answer to a question under examination), that Gowrie,
when abroad, several times said that 'he was not a wise man that, having
the execution of a high and dangerous purpose, communicated the same to
any but himself.'